A Hero Never Dies

The film opens in Thailand, where Triad member Jack (Leon Lai) lets off some steam as he shoots up bowls of fruit and a fortune teller. Afterwards, he steps outside to take a pee, joined by his teammates as big, sweeping music ascends, accompanied by the usual, beautiful, Johnnie To cinematography!

You can't help but smile at some of the over-dramatic moments in A Hero Never Dies. Either the music is just too much for what's going on, or the cast really milk their screen time with some cheesy posing or slow-motion cigar lighting...

There is definitely a hint of dark comedy stretched throughout this heroic bloodshed Milkyway production - from the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the main characters, to their lines and overall situation of using a barman at their local club, as their middle-man for passing messages to each other (like a married couple bickering, and a child caught in the middle). One extended scene of them trying to enjoy a glass of wine, while they each try to destroy one another's glass, is a prime example. Wonderfully shot, beautifully lit - but just ridiculous at the same time in a fun way.

It took me a couple of watches to enjoy A Hero Never Dies. I think a nice clean Bluray HD version would help! While it has plenty going on in its first 20 minutes, including a number of gun-fights and a darkly funny decapitation by a car door; it still feels slow. But do stick with it as the pace eventually picks up!

Leon Lai does great as the moody Jack, but it has to be Lau Ching Wan who really steals the show as Martin, with his pencil moustache, cowboy hat, and outrageous outfits. Both are great hitmen, and while they are secretly best friends and deliver some funny moments, they each are ruthless when it comes to taking down the enemy or pointing their gun.

Martial arts star and villain, Yen Shi Kwan (Fearless Hyena; Once Upon A Time In China) plays Jack's boss and Triad leader, Mr. Yam, with the great Henry Fong (Shinjuku Incident; So Close) playing Martin's boss. Johnnie To regular, Lam Suet, is present of course as are a host of other recognisable faces...

By the half-way mark, the film takes a dark turn in true Hong Kong style with Johnnie To turning things up a notch, which results in some great drama, gun-play, and heroic bloodshed action. A stylish, beautifully shot film with great performances and violent action that is well worth the watch!

Overall: If you loved A Better Tomorrow, you will love this!!

A Hero Never Dies (1998) is a film by veteran HK film maker Johnnie To and his Milky Way Image filming company that has produced some of the darkest and grittiest of the recent HK action dramas like The Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected, both 1998. A Hero Never Dies (1998) is another of these films and stars again the Milky Way face Lau Ching-Wan and Leon Lai Ming. They are both very great and make the little too shallow characters as interesting as possible.

A ruthless gangster boss kills and abuses his friends and never thanks anyone who has helped him. Lau's character is among the ones who helped him become what he is now. Lai is Lau's friend and they both have sweet girlfriends (Fiona Leung and Yo Yo Mung) that start to take care of the two when violence erupts and their history looks dark. But no one dies, only the hope for a peaceful life and forgetting and forgiving the wrongs of the past. Lau decides to avenge his fate to the boss but all this kind of thing results is more violence, and since this is an honest and un-commercial gangster drama, violence is never shown in a glorifying, positive or entertaining light.

A Hero Never Dies is written by Yau Nai-Hoi (The Longest Nite, Expect the Unexpected, Barefooted Kid (1993)) and Szeto Kam-Yuen (Nite and Unexpected, too). Unfortunately the film's problems lie in the screenplay and the characters, too. None of the male characters gets to develop too interestingly or realistically and their acts seem not to be too greatly motivated. Silence is a good thing in cinema, but what there is in the characters' minds must be expressed some way, with the tools of the art, no matter how silent the film is. Lau's and Lai's relationship is a little weird and the very long "wine glass" sequence at the beginning works surprisingly fine and kind of depicts how they respect each other but also have some disagreements, too. Mostly I find it irritating that their love for their girls seems not too warm or real and only the females are the ones that get things moving in this film. They care for their loved ones and cure them while they're almost dead but also sadly end up dead themselves very easily. But it is great to see females depicted as this strong in a HK film, but still Hero would have been much stronger a film if the emotions of the characters (for example the great idea of the damaged face of the loved one after an accident) were better written and thought about.

The theme of ruthless violence living inside To's films' characters is always very strong especially in this and the great Expect the Unexpected which has one of the most depressing, unexpected and cold endings for very long time on any film, HK or other. Hero's characters kill and slaughter each other mindlessly but always pay the price, whether you're "good" or "bad". No one wins anything by using violence in these dark and honest thrillers and so the violence is depicted as a brutal and harrowing act commited by man towards another man for some selfish and weak reason. The violence at the ending of Unexpected is pretty close to Japanese Takeshi Kitano in its intensity and wordless impact.

The visual look of Hero is again pretty stunning but not quite as in The Longest Nite which has completely awesome blue photography and menacingly dark settings in the middle of the bloody triad gangster war. Cinematographer Cheng Siu-Keung does great job in Hero and especially the ending in its bright red colors is again something very unique to HK cinema. The grittiness of the cities and places is very strong in these films. Also the music by Raymond Wong Ying-Wah is pretty effective and never gets too underlining or exaggeratedly "dramatic" but just makes the images more powerful and almost nearly hypnotic at places.

A Hero Never Dies is a good example of what HK is capable of, but still it is not as great as they have done. The mentioned Milky Way films are more noteworthy in my opinion as well as Alfred Cheung's On the Run (1988) starring Yuen Biao and Pat Ha to name just a very few of these films. A Hero would have needed better and deeper characters as well as some gaps and incredibilities of the plot filled and changed to something more noteworthy. Still A Hero is 7/10 class and, like the others, requires much more than just one viewing.

Yup, that's right, "John Woo meets Sam Peckinpah" is what came to mind when I saw this movie. Take the brotherhood theme of John Woo movies in the 80's and mix that with Sam Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch" and you get Lau Ching Wan and Leon Lai kicking ass in "A Hero Never Dies".

True to Woo's and Peckinpah's classics, the heroes in this movie are not heroes of the Dudley Do-right mold but flawed people who manage to get themselves together for one truly heroic deed.

I highly recommend this movie for fans of westerns and HK triad movies. Also recommend "The Mission" and "Running Out of Time" by Johnnie To.

Leon Lai and Ching Wan Lau work well within their respective characters, however their actions don't seem to consistently make sense in the progression of the plot. Opposite hired guns for the mob, they fluctuate in being friends and foe after a rendezvous gone awry. At some points their resulting behavior contradicts what your led to believe, which feels unintentional and confusing. The story is painfully simple, and the visuals eventually become pretentious and overused with too many angles, filters, and slow-mo moments. Not a bad movie, but Johnnie To has directed much better gritty-melodramas and unfortunately this one fails to achieve it's blend with America's Western genre. My biggest complaint is that Ching Wan Lau's character becomes plagued with a handicap, then while much screen time is devoted to portraying his hardship and fight for retribution, his character remains weak and pushed aside in the third act of the film. Lau was built up to such a high degree only to inexplicably crumble, which doesn't feel right being the movie's centerpiece. Overall, a convoluted not-so-satisfying revenge tale. Personally I was disappointed but other Johnnie To fans may enjoy. -6/10

Leon Lai teams up with Lau Chin-Wan to defeat two triad lords. This film made me remember the "old" heroic bloodshed´s - like "The Killer", "Hard Boiled" or the genesis of it all, "A Better Tomorrow". There´s still hope for Hong Kong cinema lovers... A superb movie. A true masterpiece. A fantastic mise-en-scene - stylised and romantic - from Hong Kong craftman Johnnie To. Where primitive cinema meets barroquian style and women nature becomes truly fundamental...